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Donald Trump has urged Iran’s leadership to “exercise humanity” amid the widespread protests engulfing the nation, while cautioning that the United States would respond decisively if the Iranian government began executing demonstrators.

These statements from the former U.S. president were made on Tuesday while he was en route from Detroit to Washington, where he was scheduled to confer with senior aides at the White House regarding potential actions in Iran.

When questioned about his message to Iran’s authorities, Trump responded, “They need to act with humanity. They are facing a significant issue, and I sincerely hope they refrain from harming people.”

Trump’s comments followed a day marked by increasing pressure from Washington on Iran’s ruling regime. The former president had been considering military responses against the country and had encouraged citizens to “reclaim your institutions.”

Earlier that Tuesday, Trump indicated that the United States’ strategy would hinge on Iran’s decision regarding the execution of protesters. “If they proceed with such actions, expect significant repercussions,” he told CBS. “We will respond with robust measures if they go down that path,” he added.

The president’s latest warnings to Iran come less than two weeks after he authorised a military operation in Venezuela to capture its strongman president Nicolás Maduro.

Trump’s push to actively support protesters in Iran, possibly with military strikes, would represent a far bolder and riskier move at unseating the leadership of one of America’s strategic foes that would potentially upend the Middle East.

Trump suggested US and Israeli air strikes last June had so weakened Iran that its capacity to retaliate against American interests in the region was limited. But he acknowledged US air strikes might not succeed in protecting Iranian protesters, who he vowed earlier this month to “rescue” from regime violence.

The president has also announced a 25 per cent tariff on any country doing business with Iran, which could include more than 100 nations. But he has not signed an order to implement the policy.

When asked if he was seeking democracy for Iran, Trump said: “Ideally, you’d like to see it, but what we want to see is we don’t want to see people killed and we want to see a little bit of freedom for these people.”

Several thousand protesters have been killed since the demonstrations broke out across Iran in late December — one western official said the death toll ranged between 4,000 and 5,000 people.

Trump on Tuesday said he was looking to “get some accurate numbers as to what’s happening with regard to the killing. The killing looks like it’s significant, but we don’t know yet for certain,” he said.

Trump earlier on Tuesday urged Iranian protesters via his Truth Social platform to “KEEP PROTESTING” and “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!”

Iran’s UN mission called the message a “reckless statement explicitly encourages political destabilisation and invites violence”, as it blamed the US and Israel for the civilian deaths in the Islamic republic.

The mission added in a social media post that “US fantasies and policy towards Iran are rooted in regime change” and Washington was manufacturing “a pretext for military intervention”.

During his speech on the economy in Michigan on Tuesday, Trump mentioned the failed US hostage rescue mission to Iran in 1980, in which eight US service members died.

That operation was “a disaster for Jimmy Carter”, Trump said of the late president. But he suggested his administration would not suffer that kind of mistake and he would not rule out the deployment of US forces in Iran again.

“They had all sorts of problems,” he said of the 1980 mission. “It was the exact opposite of Venezuela.”

While Trump travelled to Michigan, JD Vance, vice-president, had chaired a meeting of top national security officials.

Although a diplomatic solution to the stand-off between the US and Iran remains possible, Trump said on social media on Tuesday that he had scrapped all meetings with Tehran’s officials until the “senseless killing of protesters” ended.

Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Brussels